


Toffee

by lirin



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: 5+1 Things, Candy, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 22:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13109382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: Five questions Colin asked Kivrin, and one she asked him.





	Toffee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/gifts).



> Thanks to drayton for betaing!

When the doctors finally got tired of sticking Kivrin full of needles and let her go, the boy was waiting outside the room. He was sitting in a dreary straight-backed chair, staring at the ceiling and swinging his legs aimlessly. Kivrin couldn't recall a time before when she'd seen him and he hadn't been chattering constantly. It was just as well: she was in no mood to talk.

Keeping her gaze fixed on the floor so she wouldn't accidentally make eye contact, she pushed past him and headed down the hall. The floor tile—speckled, gray, and ancient—wasn't much to look at. Its barrenness sucked the last vestiges of warmth out of her, and she pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders. It didn't seem right, in a century with time travel and moon colonies and artificial heating, that a hospital should feel this cold and bare.

"Do you want some toffee?"

Kivrin stopped, and turned around slowly. "Excuse me?"

The boy was holding out a bag to her. "Do you want some toffee? Mr. Dunworthy got me some for Christmas, and I saved some of it so we could celebrate when he got you back. And I thought it would be nice for you to have some, since you're the reason we're celebrating."

Toffee? Kivrin tried to remember what that was. Decay, breaking down...no, that was the interpreter still in her head, expecting everyone around her to be speaking Middle English. But the boy hadn't said tọ̄̆fīen, he'd said toffee. It was some sort of candy, she thought. Was it the one with nuts in? It didn't matter; he was the first person in this hospital who'd said something nice to her. She stepped closer, and held out her hand. "Yes, I would, thank you."

***

The next time she had a medical appointment, the boy was there again. This time he came into her room, ducking through the door as soon as all the nurses had been called elsewhere. He held out the same bag of toffee from before, and Kivrin took one of the fragments that barely covered the bottom of the bag. It was well into the new year; she was surprised that a hungry boy like him had any Christmas candy remaining.

"Did you catch the awful flu that everyone had?" he asked, fishing out his own piece of toffee and chomping away.

Kivrin shivered, and ignored the question. The toffee crunched in her mouth, loud and sharp, but sweet.

"I didn't get it," he continued. He took another piece of toffee and passed the bag back. "But Mr. Dunworthy did. He almost died. My aunt caught it, too, and she died."

The nurse came in, then, and yelled at him until he left, so Kivrin never did respond to his question. But later, when the nurse had gone again, she saw that he had left his bag of toffee behind, tucked on top of her handbag. Maybe he'd just forgotten it in the rush to leave, but it seemed unlikely; her bag had been several steps farther from the door than he'd been. And there were only a few small pieces of toffee left. He probably didn't want them back. So she ate them. It was probably what he'd meant for her to do.

***

Errands, and more errands. Everyone was keeping her so busy. Were there always this many tasks upon return from an assignment, or were these just make-work to keep her too busy to think?

If the latter, it wasn't working. Kivrin was perfectly capable of walking from Brasenose to Balliol while completely lost in her memories. Which was why she didn't notice that Colin Templer was sitting by the gate until she'd already walked through it and realized that her name was being called.

"Kivrin! I didn't know you were coming over today," he said.

She turned around and walked back to the gate. "I'm just getting some paperwork signed," she replied. "Nothing important. What are you doing?"

"Eating lunch," he said, showing her a large and messy sandwich. "And reading. Mr. Dunworthy gave me this for Christmas." He help up a book called _The Age of Chivalry_ , which had somehow escaped mustard stains. "I want to go to the Crusades. Would you ever want to go back to the Middle Ages and go to the Crusades?"

Kivrin frowned. "I don't know. I..." She stared at the sky, and, when that failed her, the buildings that surrounded her; but no answer came. "I don't know."

"Well, if you do decide to go, let me know," Colin said. "Maybe we could go together."

"I suppose," Kivrin said, and left him to his book and sandwich.

***

Mr. Dunworthy had her over for dinner one night. There were just so many reports they were all being asked to write, and much of the background information would be the same on all of them. So he'd suggested that the three of them might work together on their reports and enjoy a meal together as well.

However, Mr. Dunworthy was scarcely recovered from his relapse, and he dozed off halfway through the first report. Colin looked at Kivrin, put a finger to his lips, and tipped his head toward the door. Kivrin nodded, and together they tiptoed out of the room.

"The report isn't due until the end of the week," she said when they'd found another empty room to sit in. "We'll have plenty of time to write it later."

"I don't mind putting it off," Colin said. "Now we just have to find something else to do." He bounced up and down on the couch that he was sitting on; Kivrin wasn't sure whether bouncing was the 'something else' he'd mentioned or just part of the thinking process. "So," Colin said, "what were the people you met like? Did you meet anyone my age?"

"Rosemund was about your age," Kivrin said slowly. "She was going to be married, to an old man she feared."

"Necrotic," Colin said.

"She was thoughtful and sweet, but she was only a child. She didn't deserve for people to expect as much of her as they did." Kivrin clenched her fist. "She didn't deserve to die. None of them did."

The door opened. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to fall asleep," Mr. Dunworthy said. "You could have woken me. Do you want to keep working on the reports?"

Kivrin shook her head. "You need your rest. The reports can wait until tomorrow. We have plenty of time."

***

The next time Kivrin saw Colin, she wasn't doing anything in particular. There was nothing in particular that she needed to do. So she had found a patch of grass, under a tree. She sat on the grass—so much easier now she was back to wearing hacker jeans instead of skirts—leaned up against the tree, and listened to nothing in particular. Students were chattering, the wind was rustling the leaves, far-off cars were honking, a few birds were chirping overhead. Some things were so different from where she had spent Christmas, and others so much the same.

Colin found her there, a half-hour later. He plopped himself down on the grass next to her and held out a bag of toffee. This one was nearly full, and looked much less crumpled than the sack he had left on her handbag. "Thank you," Kivrin said. She reached in and grabbed a piece. It was covered in chocolate, dulling the crunch and heightening the flavor.

Colin set the bag on the grass between them, and they sat there for a while without talking. The wind was still blowing, but Kivrin could no longer hear the leaves rustling over the crunching of her toffee.

When the bag was almost half empty, Colin said, "Do you miss them?"

Kivrin didn't answer. She picked out one of the biggest pieces of toffee from the bag and scraped the chocolate off of it with her teeth. Then she ate it, in tiny nibbles, until it was all gone. She reached for the bag of toffee to find another.

"I'm sorry," Colin said. "I just thought you might want to talk about it, to someone. I shouldn't have bothered you." He scrambled to his feet. "You can keep the rest of the toffee," he said. "I got it for you."

Kivrin still didn't look at him, but she picked up the bag of toffee and held it out to him. "Please stay," she said quietly.

He sat back down.

"It's too much toffee for me to eat all by myself, you know," she said. "I don't really feel like talking about anything right now, but I'd like to listen. Why don't you tell me about yourself, and how you ended up here at Balliol."

***

The next day at lunchtime, Colin was sitting by the gate waiting for the post again, just as Kivrin expected. Like before, he had a sandwich in one hand and a book in the other. He looked up when she approached and waved wildly with the hand holding the sandwich.

She walked over to him; her errand today didn't involve Mr. Dunworthy or paperwork, but simply Colin himself. "I have something for you," she said, holding out a waxed paper sack. "It's called honeycomb toffee. I've never had it before, so I've no idea if it's better or worse than regular toffee. But I thought you might like to help me taste test it."

Colin grinned. "I can help with that." He folded his sandwich back up in its wrappings, set it on the ground, and held a hand out for the sack that Kivrin handed over.

She nibbled on the piece she'd taken for herself. It was lighter than the other toffee she'd had recently, and didn't stick to her teeth so horribly.

Colin seemed to agree. "It's good, but I don't know if it should be called toffee," he said. "But I like it a lot," he hastened to add. "Thank you for sharing it with me."

Kivrin smiled. "It only seemed fair, after you'd gone out of your way to share things with me." She sat down near him, balancing precariously on the plinth of the stone wall next to the gate. "You've been looking out for me, even though I scarcely know you. Why do you care about me?"

Colin nibbled thoughtfully on another piece of honeycomb toffee. "Isn't that what nice people do?" he said. "Mr. Dunworthy gave me a place to stay and got me Christmas presents and all, and I'd never even met him before last month. He's the one who got me that first bag of toffee." He leaned closer, conspiratorially. "I think I'd quite like to be like Mr. Dunworthy, when I grow up. So I'm starting out small, with toffee."

"I think that's a very good idea," Kivrin said. "Although eventually we'd better find something other than candy to bond over, before our teeth rot off." She took another piece of toffee out of the bag, so that he wouldn't think she was too serious.

"We've got a lot of different types of toffee to try before then, though," Colin said. "And brittle is almost like toffee, so we should have some of that, too. And have you ever had a gobstopper? They're my favorite. They last forever."

"I'm in no particular hurry to stop eating candy," Kivrin said. She took another bite of toffee.


End file.
